Another Moon
by Minka Ink
Summary: I. Won't. Let. You. Go." His face was alive with that awful light, locked in a strange mix of fury and grief. I met his eyes and the determination, the possession in them – despite the haze - shocked me. New Moon: Edward's return...
1. Chapter 1

Jacob had wanted to kiss me. I'd known it and I'd almost let him – almost given in so that at least I'd be doing something, _anything_, to get the memory of Edward out of my head. But I'd stopped him, turned away and gotten out of the car without looking back. I knew his expression would have been hurt, but I couldn't look at him. I couldn't turn around and see him. I couldn't let him see what would have been written so clearly on my face: that I wished he were someone else. That I would have given anything for him to be Edward.

For Edward to be sitting in that car, dying for me to kiss him

The little voice in my head whimpered his name for about the ten billionth time that day.

_Edward._

Damn it! I threw myself on my bed, spiky little fingers stabbing my guts from the inside. The thought made me angry; Jacob didn't deserve that. It was Edward who deserved to be shut out, the way he had shut me out. It was Edward who should know what it felt like to love someone and know that they would never, _eve_r love you back.

I hated him. At that moment, despite the little voice, I hated him with such intensity a guttural scream came from my throat to my lips. He was a murderer – maybe not in the traditional way, or even the Vampire way – but he could have done me no more harm had he taken a knife and stuck it right in my chest. I was dead inside – to anyone but him. Jacob didn't know it, but all his efforts, all his love, were completely wasted. He may as well try and seduce a corpse. The only one I was capable of loving – and I knew it was true, knew it as well as I knew my own heartbeat, the colour of my eyes – was Edward.

And he was never coming back.

The little voice whimpered again.

It started to rain, the sound at first light and then growing heavier on the roof. I turned towards the window, to where the amber glow of the street lamp illuminated the dark green leaves of my neighbour's tree. The wind was picking up along with the rain, seeming to want to match the anger and misery howling inside me. It didn't have a prayer, I thought sourly.

Charlie would be home soon. The thought bothered me and as fast as I had jumped on the bad, I got up, suddenly not wanting to be caught upstairs sulking like a typical teenager. But then I remembered: the fishing trip. Charlie wouldn't be back for two whole days.

I would be alone for two whole days.

And suddenly I didn't want to be alone. Without thinking I left my room and headed downstairs to the kitchen. I'd made it halfway to the phone to call Jacob before I thought better of it. He would want to talk about it – about what had nearly happened. I didn't want to talk – about anything – I just wanted to scream. If only he could just sit quietly somewhere near and leave me to it.

The image flickered into my mind and I was momentarily stunned by my own selfishness.

Lightning flashed and I rolled my eyes to the empty kitchen. There _would_ be a thunderstorm, after all. Nothing like adding a bit of drama to a dark, stormy night. Now all I needed was a knock on the door.

The sound of knuckle against wood turned my insides to ice.

I stood there, locked in position, not sure I'd heard it right. Surely it was just thunder, or maybe the sound of something blowing against the house.

The knock came again, the same as before, three sharp raps against the wood.

I took two steps towards the hallway, peering around the archway so that I could see the door.

Damn! I'd left the porch light off. If someone was out there I couldn't see him. (Him – why did I automatically think it was a _him_?). I stared at the door, my feet shaped into stressed little points inside my socks. The small diamond of glass towards the top of the door looked blackly back at me.

_Rap… Rap Rap. _

This time the knock was different. The first hesitant, as thought the person on the other side were wondering whether to continue or just head off into the night. But then the second two knocks, harder than the first and close together, as though whoever he (or she, I reminded myself, with a sick little feeling) was, was shoving aside all doubt, determined that someone was going to answer the door.

I took another couple of steps forward, now well and truly standing in the hallway. Lightning flashed again and this time, for only a second, I saw the outline of a person.

It was definitely a 'him'.

The little voice in my head started stuttering, words bashing against themselves. My foot lifted as though to take another step forward but then stopped as he was illuminated again, this time clearer than before.

The little voice reached fever pitch and then stopped abruptly, along with my breath.

For there was no mistaking who he was.

_Edward._

My knees started to buckle and I let them, the tiles cool against the legs of my jeans. He was there, just behind my front door. The one person I thought I'd never see again, knocking on my door like a neighbour looking to borrow some eggs.

"Bella?"

Through the wind and rain, his voice – his beautiful voice – found me. It was a thousand times more beautiful than I remembered and I gulped convulsively, still so shocked it was all I could do to stay conscious, let alone make a decision about what the hell I was doing.

"Bella…" No question this time. His voice was heavy, tired and with an undercurrent of something else – desperation? The little voice in my head started clamouring that yes, yes that must be it. With effort I shut it down.

"Will you let me in?"

My hand was on the doorknob before I even knew I'd gotten up, and suddenly the knowledge that there was just a thin layer of oak between me and the love of my life completely threw me. Tears erupted from my eyes and my teeth bit hard on my lip – drawing blood.

From the other side of the door I heard his sharp intake of breath, felt his hands as they pressed against the door, imagined the fingers clenching into the wood, splintering it away.

I took an involuntary step back, my tongue tasting the blood pooling from the tiny split in my lip.

"Bella…" This time there was an edge to his voice, the weariness, the desperation tinged with hunger. Whatever he had come back to say, this must be killing him, I thought bitterly.

I wondered why he hadn't just let himself in, appeared in my bedroom the way he had so many times before. Back then. I cringed at the memory. This approach was just so… formal. Like he was trying to treat me with courtesy, trying to respect my privacy, my house, Charlie, something… But why now? Because he'd hurt me and he was sorry? Had he changed his mind? Was there something he'd left undone? Was there a reason he had to tread carefully now?

The questions spun madly in my brain.

Maybe this respect, this courtesy was all he could offer me now. Now that his feelings for me had died.

A flame of rage, smothered and deadened by his shock appearance, flared inside of me.

His feelings had died but mine lived on – horribly, ridiculously, unstoppably strong. Every minute, every second of loving him while knowing he didn't love me back sickened me. I wanted to rip him out of my heart with my bare hands, I wanted to die rather than go on loving him so pathetically. He should have thought of that first, I raged to myself. He should have known his feelings were only so-deep, that me – being stupidly, pitifully human - would open not only her heart, but her soul to him. And, as such, never ever be able to let it go.

"Bella?" His voice –

_Edward!_

_-_ sounded calmer and I imagined his fists had unclenched and were now at his sides. Without wanting to I pictured his eyes. He would be staring at the door. If not for the wood, I'd be staring right at him.

My throat constricted with sudden force, panic stealing my breath as efficiently as a killer's noose. I took another step away suddenly sure I wasn't ready, that I'd never be ready to hear what he was going to say. For it could only be bad – I'd been a fool to believe he could love me to begin with. As much as I wanted him, as much as every nerve in my body was howling for me to open the door and just take of him what I could – whether it be five minutes or five seconds – my fear was stronger. My fear screamed that if I opened the door, even one split-second of his golden eyes – even if they were empty of all but sympathy – would make me love him just that little bit more, make my heart stretch that little bit more, make my soul fall just that little bit deeper. And then it would really be over, for no anger, no fear, no nothing would keep me from throwing myself into his arms, clinging to him even as he tried to remove me, screaming, weeping, begging him to let me be in his life – if not as his love, if not as a friend than as anything. I would get down on my knees, on my face, if need be, if it would make him take me with him. And as I looked at the door, even with it still in place and his pale amber eyes, his perfect face, his sweet smell still an inch of wood away, I felt my heart swell, felt that extra love start – despite everything.

And it took everything I had to turn around and _run._


	2. Chapter 2

As I turned, I prayed my legs wouldn't let me down, that my natural clumsiness wouldn't send me sprawling with a sprained ankle, or worse, something that would require an embarrassing trip to the hospital.

I reached the kitchen and then the back door, amazingly without incident, and literally flung myself out into the night. He would know I wasn't standing behind the door anymore, my scent would grow faint, but hopefully he'd just think I'd run upstairs and his new-found politeness would keep him outside, either waiting for me to change my mind, or not waiting as he lost interest and left again.

_Edward!_

Outside the weather was far worse than I'd realised, the rain clutching at my clothes like heavy wet fingers, the wind pushing me back, even as I fought to cross the backyard to scale the wooden fence.

That I was running away from him horrified me even as it kept me sane. I simply couldn't take any more, couldn't stand to see him as he'd been that day in the forest: distant, impatient, regretful that I was unable to let go.

It never occurred to me that it wouldn't be that way; that his regret might be due to something else entirely, that his love might still exist, despite what he'd said and how long he'd been gone. The only thing I could imagine was that this must have something to do with Alice, that she'd seen what was in my mind, the crazed thoughts of finding him, of finding someone else who could help me find him. The thoughts that I could really, honestly do _anything_ to be with him – the pathetic thoughts, the insane thoughts, the selfish thoughts, the hurtful thoughts. Was it possible that she'd seen I would do something so crazy it would hurt them? Somehow damage their secrecy? Had she shared this with Edward? Had they sat down and discussed me? Discussed me the way you'd discuss a rat problem or a particularly smelly relative who just wouldn't leave?

As I reached the fence and started clambering over, tearing the inner thigh of my jeans in the process, I could picture it so clearly I wanted to throw up.

_You've got to tell her Edward._

_I did, I told her when I left!_

_Well you've got to tell her again – get it through to her this time._

_  
I don't see how –_

_Well you've got to find a way. It isn't just her - this time she's putting __**us**__ in danger, Edward, is that what you want?_

_No! But what can I do?_

_You can go back – make her listen. Make her believe – You don't actually love her do you?_

_No!_

_Then go back and tell her!_

_I thought I had._

_Well you were wrong – I told you what I saw! Now go back there and stop her!_

I dropped to the earth on the other side of the fence, my knees shaking with the impact, my face swimming with rain and the beginning of tears. I wasn't a fool, I knew that the Alice voice of my imagination was meaner, less sympathetic than the Alice I had known. No matter the danger, Alice was probably still sad for me. I had to believe that her affection had been real, that something of that time had been real. But at the same time I knew Alice, knew how she felt about Jasper, just how far she would go to keep him safe. If she'd seen something in my future that would threaten them, I knew what she'd do – just as I knew what Edward would do.

Especially now that he didn't love me.

I whimpered aloud this time, the sound audible despite the screaming wind.

That he'd _never _loved me.

But such thoughts were useless. If I could just stay away from him – stay away long enough for Alice to see a new future, to see it and call him and tell him. Tell him so I wouldn't need to go through it again. Tell him so that he'd leave, _without_ having to grind my heart into vapour for a second time.

As I ran I made a solemn vow: no matter what it took I would stop craving him. I would throw myself into something – anything - to occupy my brain so that thoughts of him would be to a minimum. So that I wouldn't crumple so far down as to start having those thoughts of finding him. So that my thoughts of him, when they came, would be heartbroken – yes - but not desperate, or at least not as desperate as they'd been. As I ran I swore on Charlie, Renee, Angela and even Jacob.

Jacob! My mind gasped, seizing on his image like a hot sweater in an ice box. I would be with Jacob! Be with him the way he wanted me to! I would be everything to him that he'd want me to be; explode into his life and into his heart and cling to them for dear life. I'd use his love for me as a lifeline, use it to haul myself out of the fire and keep me out – even if the flames would always be licking at my heels.

Maybe it wasn't right, but I would make it right! I would force myself to love him; drown in all his good points, his kindness, his everything. If only I could get to him – get to him before Edward found me. Because if he found me, if he said the words I knew he'd come to say I wouldn't survive. I'd never claw my way out.

I was in the woods now, fighting not only the wind and rain but tree branches and thick roots that lunged out of the earth to snag my feet and bruise my shins. I threw a glance over my shoulder. I could see my house, the light coming from the kitchen window. I was glad I couldn't see the front door – I didn't want to know if he was still there, waiting for me, or on foot walking away.

Both thoughts lead to horror, to misery. The only one that didn't was somehow getting away, somehow making it far enough. Somehow finding Jacob and hiding deep in his arms.

But then as I staggered over a particularly prominent tree root, barely keeping my feet as I did so, I _felt_ him. And in that moment I knew he wasn't standing on my porch, or casually strolling away down my street.

He was coming after me.

My heart hit turbulence, jolting up and down in my chest with horrible force. I turned again towards the light of the house, still running, no longer caring if I went down on my face. Maybe I'd get lucky, I thought wildly, maybe I'd go down hard and knock my head so bad I'd go into a coma and –

"Bella…"

I stopped in my tracks, my head still wrenched awkwardly towards the light. I felt my hands start to shake and a scream of denial build in my throat.

"Bella – please…" Despite the storm and the thick strands of soaking hair moulded to my head, his words were so clear he could have been standing next to me, murmuring them in my ear.

Slowly I turned, wanting badly to run, to keep running, but knowing it was useless – had always been useless. I could feel the pain and the fear for my still-broken heart twisting my features, contorting them into expressions they'd never before known. If I was ugly compared to him before, I thought bitterly, I would be doubly so now.

Not that he'd care either way.

"Please Bella…I'm not going to hurt you."

His words, just as the sheer glory of him, the awful, untouchable perfection of him came into view yanked me to the cliff face and sent me hurtling over the edge. I screamed at him, screamed so hard I doubled over and my fingers twisted into clawed fists. The words that wanted to come out, the ones that told him to go away, leave me alone, don't do this to me, please, _please_ don't do this were all hopelessly tangled in that one terrible scream that went on and on, seemingly forever, before finally, finally, choking off to die.

He looked shocked, horrified, his honey-coloured eyes wider than I'd ever seen them in his white, wet face. He was standing about six feet away from me, his back to a huge, towering pine. And as I looked at him - the awful scream just an echo in my mind and a rawness in my throat - my heart, my horrible, treacherous, Judas heart, just _leaped._

I wrenched my eyes away from him, whimpering. It was a thousand, a million times worse than I had imagined. It was like seeing him, for the first time, all over again; like seeing him die and then finding him brought back to life. Every pore in my skin, every hair on my head trembled with love for him. And the awful thing, the truly terrible, unbearable thing was that for every tremor of love, there was the cold, dark certainty that nothing, not even a sliver, could ever be offered in return.

I took a shaky step back, stumbled and fell. Immediately he was there, crouched next to me, one arm supporting my back seconds before it slammed down into the mud. The feel of his cold skin through my thin sweater was purest torture, a sadistic reminder of the last time he had touched me, the last time I had been in his arms.

"D-don't!" I jerked away from him, dragging myself just inches away, the mud sucking at my jeans with the effort. "Don't touch me!"

His eyes, still huge and golden, regarded me without blinking. I couldn't look at them, to do so was to throw myself into the whirlpool and be lost forever.

"Bella, please – you have to listen to me. I need you to listen to me."

Without looking at him I shook my head viciously, the little voice in my head wailing and beating it's fists against my mind, desperate for me to succumb, not just to listen to him, but to throw myself against him, let go of my longing and inhale his sweet smell deep into my nostrils and let it sooth the remnants of the scream from my throat.

He touched me again, this time a cold hand against my cheek. Immediately I felt myself ripple, lose solidity and start to melt against him. With a will born from the purest heartache alone I yanked my anger back around me like a cape and snapped my head around to face him.

"Don't _touch_ me." This time it was his turn to flinch, his hand pausing in mid-air at the centre point between our faces. I allowed the cloak of rage to spread, not just over my body but over my face. The ragged mess of misery scraped from my features to leave the red raw visage of anger. I saw the change in my face register on his and his hand dropped to the earth, any intention he had of reaching out again deader than dead.

"Ok…" His voice was soft, careful now. Within his smooth tones I could hear the twang of restraint. "I'm sorry, Bella, I didn't mean –"

"Didn't mean _what_? To come here? You mean you just accidentally stumbled across my house?"

"No…" He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "I always meant to come here."

Forgetting for a second that I was the human and he the vampire I barred my teeth at him and hissed in rage.

"Well I don't want you here – understand me?" My voice shook, the little voice in my mind completely trashing the hotel room of my brain at my words. I clawed the cloak closer to my flesh. "I don't want you here!" I repeated, feeling the scream building up again in my throat. "_I don't want you here!"_

Something flashed in Edward's eyes. For just a moment he had the look of a man reliving something truly horrible. His shoulders hunched infinitesimally and his head dropped ever so slightly forward as though it had grown heavier on his neck.

My heart, still winging violently in my chest, hit a particularly large air-pocket and plummeted to the ground.

"Don't say that."

At first I thought I'd imagined it, his words – usually bell-clear and beautifully formed – came out guttural-sounding and ragged around the edges.

My rage cloak billowed around me.

"Why?" I spat. "Is it only ok for _you_ to say it? You can give it but you can't take it?" His eyes seemed to grow dull as I raged, but I couldn't stop, didn't care if his already low opinion of me was dwindling into nothingness. "I don't want you here," I said again. "I wish you'd never come back! _I hate _-"

Quick as a flash he was back at my side, his cold, cold fingers pressing against my lips, forcing the word that had come so close to bursting forth to stall in my mouth.

"Don't!" And now _he_ sounded angry. His eyes that had grown dull suddenly raging a pure, brilliant topaz.

"Bella…" He leaned closer, his perfect lips locked into the last shape of my name. From this close I could see his nostrils flare and knew that he wasn't just fighting his anger, but his thirst…

The thought shocked me – not because I was afraid, but because my first reaction was to want to press my body into him, fling back my head and tilt my neck to his face.

Instead I stared at him, my rage cloak unravelling beneath the power of being in his arms, my flesh beneath his fingers.

His eyes dilated and I saw them flick to the white skin of my neck, to my lips and then back again.

"Don't…" He said again. "Don't ever say that."


	3. Chapter 3

I felt saturated – not by the rain, but by him

I felt saturated – not by the rain, but by him. Suddenly just looking into his eyes was more intense, somehow more primitive than my urges to press my skin to his skin, to sink my very essence into him. His gaze was like my own personal nirvana and in that moment I wanted desperately to live through it all over again, live through every awful, desperate day, just so I could come again to this one perfect moment, this moment where I had lost him but had found him once more.

Even if this time it really would be the last.

Insanity – this was what it was like to be truly insane, I thought to myself with sudden clarity. To be in the arms of a vampire, a vampire who had broken your heart, and to be happier than you've ever been, even knowing that he was about to break it all over again.

But then as suddenly as I was in his arms I was out of them. This time it was his turn to jerk away, to skitter backwards across the muddy earth, horror, fear and something else, something akin to panic, infecting his perfect features.

Something - a shudder, I thought dimly - passed through me and instantly I knew it was the precursor to something bigger, like the minor tremors that precede a massive earthquake.

And I was right.

I felt another shudder, deep in my chest. I tried to swallow; my tongue a thick, dry presence in my mouth.

_His_ mouth, I noted to myself with the sluggishness of someone swimming out of a deep anaesthetic, was partly open, dragged to the sides as though by invisible fingers, lips skinned half back from white teeth.

Like he's in agony, I slurred to myself, dumbly glancing down at my hands as though to somehow find his blood on them.

"Oh god, Bella…"

I looked back up, my head a massive, clumsy bulb on the stalk of my neck. The infection, I noted dimly, seemed to have spread. His eyes _burned_ with it, their golden depths made up of layer upon layer of horror, fear and that indefinable emotion.

_Hatred? Does he hate me now?_ I wondered, my mind stumbling thickly over the thought. _Is that better or worse?_

I giggled, suddenly, helplessly. The sound clogged and smattering like an ancient lawnmower jerked to life.

But then as suddenly as it started it cut off, silenced by the massive rumble that started in my chest and then literally tore through the rest of me. My fingers moved to my abdomen, to my chest, to my face, searching for the deep fissure that would surely be there. Because I could feel it. It was more than being cut in half, more than being broken. Part of me was just…

Gone.

"Bella – oh god please – Bella I need you to forgive me." His voice was tortured beyond question and yet still so beautiful it defied reason.

I realised my head had slumped and struggled to lift it.

He was on his knees, leaning towards me, his hands splayed in the dark earth like large white spiders.

And suddenly I knew what had happened to me, could see it without any sort of emotional filter, everything from the last few months until now.

I'd been wrong, I mused, to think my heart had been broken before. All the pain had just been a warning – like a bridge that creaks just before it crashes into the river. The pain had meant it was still intact, that it had a chance to stay whole. It was why I had run, I realised suddenly. Subconsciously I'd known – I wasn't scared of loving him more, of embarrassing myself with hysterical pleas. I was scared of this. Of what would happen when I reached my limit.

Of feeling _nothing_.

I couldn't speak. The broken thing in me seemed tied irrevocable to my mind. My thoughts came in fits and starts, thoughts about his hands, his wet hair, the way the moonlight filtered a jagged slash across his salt-white cheek.

_I have to test it_, I thought distantly. _If I look him in the eyes I'll know. If I feel pain, I'll know._

"Will you let me take you inside? I won't… " his eyes crackled with something and his voice seemed to fail, finishing on a near whisper "…touch you."

I didn't answer, couldn't answer, just looked at him. In his eyes was everything I'd been dying to see – everything, I thought with strange calm, that had probably been there all along, maybe even that day in the forest.

It was all over him, painted bright like subway graffiti.

He loved me. Desperately.

The hate, the disgust I'd seen before, it had all been for him, I realised. He'd been horrified by his behaviour – by all of it: the leaving and, now, the returning. My reaction, my anger had brought out his worst fears, fears he was convinced he deserved.

His face convulsed tearlessly and in that moment I knew why he had left me. He couldn't stand to be the one who would ultimately kill me – whether through changing me, as I had so deeply desired, or through an accident like my meeting James or the incident with Jasper.

At that moment it was like _I_ was the mind reader, able to strip his brain of every thought that had ever come his way in relation to me.

He couldn't live without me, but loving me was like being buried alive.

All of this I realised the same way I would realise that the sky was blue, or that there were more white cars on the road than black.

It meant nothing to me.

Getting to my feet was strangely easy. I didn't think about it – couldn't think about it – just stood, the only thought that stuck was that my once-white socks were now the same brown as my eyes.

I turned to walk back to the house, my eyes focused on the glow from the kitchen window – a glow that, despite its warm lemon colour, seemed colder than the crypt.

"Bella?"

He stayed behind me as I walked, and my thoughts twitching uncertainly over his presence, his proximity, but never staying long enough to make any measure on what it all meant.

The little voice, the one who had screamed his names for months on end, the one who had made all sorts of promises to me as I lay clenched in a ball and wide awake, the one who had no doubt alerted Alice and brought this whole mess back down on me, was silent.

_It was her_, I thought. The broken thing, the missing thing – _her._

I reached the edge of the woods and the back fence of the house. His hand on my shoulder stopped me before I could climb.

_He wants to help me_. The thought fizzed briefly in my mind and then vanished. I shook him off easily and pulled myself up and over, dropping to the ground on the other side.

I didn't look back.

The warmth inside the house shocked me and I shivered against my wet clothes. I half turned to Edward, knowing he had come inside.

"I'm going to change."

I didn't wait for a response, didn't even consider that there would be one, just walked to the stairs and started to climb, briefly bemoaning the stains my filthy socks made on the beige carpet.

Upstairs I walked into my room and pulled clothes from my wardrobe, not caring what they were only that they were dry. My mind seemed to be focused on basic needs. The fact that Edward–

_She's not just broken, she's dead…_

- was downstairs seemed completely unimportant compared to dry clothes and a towel to squeeze the worst of the water from my hair.

When I was done I headed straight back down. To not do so didn't even occur to me. The memory of standing behind the front door, exploding with fear and gutted by longing seemed as hazy as the menu from a long-closed restaurant.

When I entered the kitchen I moved straight to the kettle and turned it on, keeping my back to where I'd seen his figure in my periphery as I'd entered the room.

"You can sit down if you want." Now it was my turn to be formal, though there was no premeditation. I simply spoke the words that came to mind.

"Bella…"

_How many times has he said my name tonight_? _Three? Five?_

On impulse, in the privacy of my mind, I spoke his name.

_Edward_.

I waited. The thought - the name - felt empty, like that of a character in a TV show I'd rarely watched, not the name of the person I couldn't live without. I tried it again.

_Edward._

Inside me, nothing moved.

_Not even a mouse. _

I grinned wryly to the kitchen wall.

My thoughts switched back to the kettle, to the warm mug I would soon hold between my frigid palms, to the way my hoodie felt soft and scratchy at the same time.

The kettle boiled and I reached for a mug, filling it with water and then dangling a tea bag in it.

_You got it backwards, kid_. Charlie would have said.

Charlie… The thought of him left me neither warm nor cold. The only thought associated with him was the fishing trip. That he would be gone for two days. That he would be back on Monday.

_What day is it again?_

I nestled the mug in my hands. It felt good. I turned towards the table.

He was still standing, his gray coat dripping twin puddles onto the tiled floor. I sat down without speaking, keeping my hands twined around my tea. Still he didn't move so I took a sip and carefully let my eyes wash over him.

"Alice didn't see anything, did she…" It was a statement more than a question.

His eyes, surrounded by thick, drenched lashes, seemed to widen and narrow at the same time.

"What do you mean…?"

I shook my head, taking a sip.

"Alice – I thought that's why you were back – because she saw something." My words sounded tired, expressionless. From the corner of my eye I saw him flinch.

"No, I…" He broke off, seemingly unable to finish. I tried not to look at him, to do so when I felt so… so nothing, was uncomfortable. I focused on my tea.

I shrugged, my shoulders feeling strangely light.

"You don't need to…explain, that is."

I heard rather than saw him sit. Though he had no need for it a heavy breath whistled through his lips.

"Are you…ok?" I sensed that he was unhappy with the question, as though there was something he wanted to ask, but didn't quite know how and so settled in the end for inferior words with a meaning that could well be lost.

I looked at him, waiting, _expecting_ the rage to swell up inside of me; for the little voice to start screeching that I was not ok, that I would _never_ be ok - unless he was with me.

The break seemed permanent.

"That depends on your definition." I smiled a little at my own wit – or lack of it.

"Bella…" He trailed off. I looked at his face. My name on his lips seemed to cut him and heal him at the same time.

I stared into my tea.

He sighed.

"What is it you thought Alice would have seen?"

I shook my head.

"Maybe something about me screwing things up for you guys – trying to find you and telling the wrong person."

"You were coming to find me?"

I shrugged again. "I don't know. I thought about it – but then I thought about a lot of things…"

His hand came up, resting lightly on the table, as though he wanted to reach over and take mine but didn't quite dare.

I moved my hands from my mug to my lap. I knew what was coming.

"Bella…" his voice cracked for real this time. "Bella I'm so sorry. So sorry I - I should never have left you – never _wanted_ to leave you – god – I thought I could…" His hands clenched into bright white fists and he shook his head with sudden violence.

"But I couldn't. I can't. I love you! I can't exist without you. I don't know how – I just – I have to be with you. I _have_ to be with you!"

"Edward…" I paused, deliberately. Maybe it was hope that made me do it, hope that speaking his name out loud would do what looking at him and listening to him couldn't.

"Bella…?" His voice: hopeful, agonised, coated in self-hatred, regret and pain.

I swallowed and cleared my throat. My love for him felt so…abstract, like it had belonged to someone else. If it was still there it was buried so far beneath I couldn't feel it; frozen solid in some deep, dark cave like a remnant from the ice age. Somewhere I might never find it.

And maybe there was a reason for that, I thought suddenly. Maybe this was the only way I would survive. Because regardless of whether he loved me, I could see the self-loathing screaming from every tortured bend in his beautiful frame. He hated himself for leaving me but he hated himself just as much – perhaps even more – for coming back, for being so weak as to put his needs ahead of my own. To break his own promise.

To know that sooner or later, he'd be the death of me.

It was only a matter of time before he left me again, I realised. It was more than his honour or his integrity or his selflessness – his _love_ for me demanded it. I didn't know if my break could be fixed, I didn't know if there was some way to bring it back, but what I did know was that he would leave me, and if I let him, it would happen again and again and again.

And eventually, it would be the death of _him_.

I stared at my hands. Maybe it wasn't about breaking, but about protecting, _shielding _myself from what I knew he would do to me – from what he would do to himself. Perhaps it was like his inability to get into my mind, or more to the point, my ability to keep him out. Maybe this was the same sort of thing, my mind's way of blocking not only his access to my thoughts, but to my heart.

Protecting both of us in the process.

"I'm sorry." I looked up slightly, my eyes touching the sharp white angle of his jaw, before jerking back down to my tea.

If nothing else, I thought, I had learned a lesson from him: Do it quickly, leave no room for argument.

He looked at me, his need carving deep hollows in his cheeks, his eyes reflecting a man poised on a precipice, waiting for the gust of wind that would either blow him to safety, or straight into hell.

Whether I could be fixed or not, I had no choice. Whether there was anything _to_ fix, or whether my love for him had gasped its last breath, I had no choice. The certainty of the thought stunned me. It made me think of a movie I'd watched with Renee once, _The Bridges of Madison County. _

_This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime..._

I had no choice.

"I'm sorry Edward…" I looked at my hands, my thighs in their blue sweatpants, at the little poc-marks in Charlies' pine kitchen table – anywhere but at him.

"It's too late."

**Disclaimer:**** All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Edward's POV…**

"I don't want you here," she said again. "I wish you'd never come back! _I hate _-"

Faster than sound she was in my arms, my fingers pressed to her mouth.

It was her commitment to saying it, when I could hear the word teetering on her lips, a sheer millisecond from being spoken aloud. And suddenly knew I couldn't bear it, couldn't allow her to say it. For however much her scream and her rage had spelled it out to me, I could not live with those words in my ears.

To do so might make it real.

_Oh god her scent…_

I felt myself shudder, tightening my grip on her.

"Don't, " I said to her. "Don't ever say that."

And I meant it, could feel the compulsion to stop her saying it, stop her _thinking _it, to do whatever I could, whatever I had to.

I felt it with such urgency, such desperation that I didn't notice her change, didn't register the way her lips relaxed and parted beneath my fingers, the way her heart began hammering in her chest. Didn't notice until the almost imperceptible shift of her body, the way it seemed to melt - as though her bones had dissolved inside her - to fit with aching perfection to mine.

And suddenly, ridiculously, I wanted to kiss her; more than that, I wanted to kiss her hard, to shred her clothes beneath my fingers, to make love to her…

_Drink her._

The urge was so powerful I trembled. _This_ after I had left her; _this_ after what I had done to her.

This… despite what I deserved.

I was a monster.

I didn't think, just hurled myself away from her, my mind aching with images of her naked body, white and wet in the moonlight.

It wasn't right. I deserved so much worse than what she had dealt. I deserved to be tortured for what I'd done; tortured for coming back, for being so utterly selfish, for allowing my obsession with her, my need to be with her, to come ahead of her chance for a normal life.

I deserved a lifetime of begging, of re-earning her trust, of working every second of every day to make her love me again. I didn't deserve this: this complete, mindless… _surrender._

She hadn't moved, her eyes heavy-lidded, her soft lips still parted as though yet beneath my fingers, though no longer on the cusp of words.

She didn't have a choice, my mind screamed. It was trickery, the worst kind of manipulation.

_You're a vampire – a monster!_

Her anger, even her hate, if that's what it really was, deserved to run its course. It was her right to say what she needed to and to hear what I had come to say; to hear it or not hear it as she chose, but to be completely in her right mind with the decision, not seduced by what I knew was my power.

Not the false decision of someone under a vampire's spell.

"Oh god Bella…"

Everything I wanted to say roiled in my stomach, a glut of half-formed sentences, of explanation – of declaration. But nothing seemed right; no words could convey how I felt: that I was sorry for what I'd done, that I loved her beyond imagining, that I couldn't be away from her despite what I had done, and despite what I might _yet_ do.

If she let me stay.

But then something happened to her, I saw it even before the strange laugh that filtered from her lips like smoke.

The laugh that was somehow not a laugh.

Her whole body seemed to tense, then relax, her face clearing of all expression as though all the angst, all the hurt, had been but strands from a stray cobweb – easily wiped away.

And suddenly I knew I had to speak – say something, _anything_ before whatever was happening to her finished. Because I knew it - even if I couldn't read her mind - knew that it was catastrophic, knew that I had to try, even if it was beyond me.

"Bella – oh god please – Bella I need you to forgive me." As I pleaded I sank forward, my hands falling heavily onto the damp earth.

She looked at me and no pain could have been greater, could have delivered a more crushing blow, than the _nothing_ I saw on her face.

If anything she seemed quietly bemused, slightly perplexed. I watched her look down and back up to a point just past me. Her eyebrows raised slightly and I saw her mouth curve in a faint _O_, as though something had occurred to her – but something of only vague interest, like the way you'd remember the name of the man who drove the school bus when you were eight.

I felt myself fading, struggling to piece myself together. Images flashed before my eyes, memories made painfully vivid…

That awful day in the woods; forcing myself to say things I didn't mean – could _never _mean – so that she might have a chance for a normal life. The look on her face as I'd told her she wasn't good for me, that I didn't want her, that she would forget me.

The slow crumbling of her, like scree on a cliff face.

To walk away with that image in my mind. To have it forever on my mind – I'd thought that was the worst.

The memory jumped, being in Alaska, images of her face, her skin, the smooth curve of her waist, her hips, her neck, rotting me from the inside. How I'd done nothing but think of her, crave her, long to be with her. How I'd warred with myself, how I'd punished myself, how I'd thrown myself into feeding until my eyes had shone white-gold like the sun.

It jumped again. Coming back for her. The weeks of skulking outside her house, balanced on a see-saw of longing and self-disgust. Reading Charlie's thoughts, stealing his worry and his pain as he watched Bella's decline – a decline that had shocked me, even though I was seeing it through someone else's eyes.

To find her that way: thin, skin so pale it was nearly transparent - like she was fading from life - sent me into a spiral. She was supposed to be better off, I had raged. What I had done was supposed to _save_ her life, not destroy her!

My mind lurched forward again, to the forest, to the scream, to her face as she seemed to detonate on the inside. To the silence of the aftermath, the wretched trembling of her, the way she'd tried to turn from me, only to stumble, to fall.

And oh god to touch her. To touch her again – as though for the first time. My throat had burned with her sweet, haunting scent and my whole body - my mind, my heart, everything - was suddenly, intensely aware. My lungs wanted to inhale great gusts of her, to stay alive by breathing her.

To be brought _back_ to life_._

Knowing once again, irretrievably, that she _was_ my life.

And now…I was dying.

_I was a fool. _I thought to myself_. _This_ is what I deserve…_

"Will you let me take you inside? I won't… touch you." The words were sour on my tongue, somehow bare, insufficient.

At first I thought she would stay there, her lovely face, her terrible indifference, framed by moonlight. But then she got to her feet, turned and started walking back through the woods towards the house.

I followed her, forcing my feet to move slowly, my eyes on her small frame – grown so insubstantial in the months since I'd seen her, like she was held together by threads.

_God…_

She reached the fence and I couldn't help myself, reached out to her, my fingers keening to touch her, to lift her over – to hold her in my arms for just a few precious seconds.

She shrugged me off and climbed over. I followed, unable to lose sight of her for a second, across the yard and into the light of the kitchen.

"I'm going to change."

I watched her walk away, aching to go with her, but letting her go.

_Only so far_, I told myself, aware that my inner voice had taken on a tremulous edge.

Through the sounds of the muffled storm I could hear the kitchen clock ticking quietly. I thought about sitting, but couldn't; my limbs were rigid with nervous energy, I wanted to run, run faster and harder than I ever had, slough off some of the pain that pulsed through me.

But I needed to be here – with her.

_What have I done…?_

This - It was all so different to what I had imagined. To think at one time I had _wanted_ her to forget me, _wanted _her to stop loving me. Thought it would be easier for me knowing she wasn't in pain, knowing she'd sleep soundly at night. It's what had haunted me, carved deep grooves in my guts, in my heart, as I'd lurked in Charlie's mind and watched her through his eyes. But as she came back downstairs and I looked at her, at her small pale face, at the sweet heart-line of her jaw grown sharp beneath her skin, at her thick fall of chestnut hair almost blackened by water, at her wide eyes that regarded me cautiously from behind soft, black lashes, the distance I saw there cut me.

And kept cutting.

And yet despite the wounds that bloomed beneath my skin, the unbearable beauty of her almost _floored _me.

"You can sit down if you want." She spoke quietly, without inflection, her freshly socked feet moving softly to the other side of the kitchen.

"Bella…" Her name came out as a whisper, flimsy as membrane.

I watched her as she boiled the kettle, made her tea and moved around to the table. I couldn't speak – all that wanted to come out was the pained repetition of her name. Just standing there and watching her - there in that familiar kitchen - added a new brace of knives to the weapons in my gut.

"Alice didn't see anything did she."

My churning thoughts paused, momentarily confused by her words.

"What do you mean…?"

"Alice – I thought that's why you were back – because she saw something."

_Is that it? She thinks I came back because of a vision?_

I was horrified. I thought – no, more than thought, I was so _sure_ that she would have known - the minute she saw me - exactly why I had come back. My love for her was so intense I felt ablaze with it, like it would be visible from space.

"No, I…"

Had I been that convincing? Was it possible she'd believed it – believed it so deeply that my love looked like a lie?

_Her face – her face that day in the woods…_

"You don't need to…explain, that is."

Her voice. The nothingness of it. As if no matter what I said, she was unreachable.

Untouchable.

I sat, the nervous energy seemed to be pooling in my legs, making them jitter uncomfortably.

_Say something – for gods sake, SAY something!_

"Are you…ok?" So much more I wanted to say, so many questions –

_Do you still love me? Can you ever still love me?_

_- _I was dying to ask but the see-saw was narrower now, more precarious. The words, pathetically weak lingered on my tongue.

She looked at me with that peculiar un-Bella-like gaze.

The first layer of true panic joined the knives inside me.

"That depends on your definition." She gave a small smile, her eyes naked of even a hint of it.

"Bella…"

_Say SOMETHING!_

"What is it you thought Alice would have seen?"

_Not that, you idiot – tell her how you feel, make her hear you – make her EYES hear you!_

She shook her head, averting her gaze once more. Part of me was glad.

"Maybe something about me screwing things up for you guys – trying to find you and telling the wrong person."

My long-silent heart gave a phantom _thu-thump_ in my chest.

"You were coming to find me?"

She shrugged again. "I don't know. I thought about it – but then I thought about a lot of things…"

Hope rippled through me, flowing over the panic, the open wounds, like a cold salve. I lifted my hand, my fingers already tingling with the thought of hers, then hesitated, poised to reach out, to enfold her warmth into the cool of my palm. But then her hands were gone, snatched below the table to the shelter of her lap.

Hope departed. And in its wake was a pain I had never thought could exist. And yet I didn't know what was worse: the pain or the panic that was suddenly everywhere, scorching me.

Words inched their way up, vowels and consonants, words and phrases hooking, wrenching and clawing their way up my throat.

"Bella…" My voice staggered, and fell. With effort, ignoring the vague surprise on her face –

_Don't look at her, just say it, SAY IT!_

- I hauled it up.

"Bella, I'm so sorry. So _sorry_ I - I should never have left you – never _wanted_ to leave you – _god_ – I thought I could…" Panic, regret and horror, a great violent mass of it, was crashing relentlessly into me.

_If only she would listen to me_, I thought in agony. _If only I could make a dent._

"…But I couldn't. I_ can't_. I love you! I can't exist without you. I don't know how – I just – I have to be with you. I _have_ to be with you!"

"Edward."

_Please, please, please… _

"Bella…?" But this time the hope, when it came, was false. It felt cheap, like a car boot handbag; too bright and tacky.

I could see it in her eyes. Knew exactly what was coming.

"I'm sorry…" She paused and my imitation hope lurched forward with an eagerness that horrified me.

"I'm sorry Edward… It's too late."

For a moment, or maybe it was longer, I felt nothing. Inside me, everything had gone still and silent – the way I'd always imagined a movie theatre must feel, once the lights are turned off and the audience has long gone home. I realised I'd lost my hearing. Though she still lived – was clearly breathing in front of me – her heartbeat was lost to me. Not only that but the rain on the roof; the clock that ticked a plasticky beat behind its plasticky face – all gone.

"Edward?" I saw her mouth the word, watched my name bloom on her lips, on her tongue. I couldn't speak – not one word – could only stare at her, stare at her and wonder how the hell I was supposed to live without her.

_Then don't…_

The thought was so quiet I almost missed it, a tiny whisper in the corner of my mind. In front of me, but more than miles away, Bella took another sip of her tea, a small frown tipping the edges of her mouth.

I tried to imagine never seeing her again – not the way it had been in Alaska, knowing that it had been me who had ended it, me who had left, me who could return, despite my reasons for leaving. I tried to imagine not having that choice, no escape route should I weaken and crack. Tried to imagine how I would occupy my eternity, knowing that the greatest love I could ever know had left me behind.

My life without her swelled dark with debris in my mind.

_Don't let her go…_

This time I heard it immediately and, accompanying it, the first flicker of movement - in my stomach, in my chest.

"Are you ok…?"

Her beautiful mouth moved carefully around the words, mirroring my earlier question without meaning to.

The flicker spread, hot like the panic had been, but with no fear attached to it. There was doubt still, yes, but suddenly I wasn't afraid.

_Don't let her go…_

Bella jumped slightly, as though startled, then got up and moved across the room, to the phone. I watched her, feeling the flicker gaining power, watched her speak soundlessly into the handset. I watched her lips, watched their smooth shape, their dusky rose tint, the hint of her white teeth.

I started to shake.

_Don't. Let. Her. Go._

She put the phone down, walked back to the table, sat down. She looked… apologetic, sorry that she had interrupted, even though I hadn't said a word.

_You've waited a lifetime for her…_

And suddenly I was erupting. Though I didn't move, there was a wrecking ball inside me, laying waste to me. My eyes shimmered as though trying to fix on the skyline through the open window of a fast-moving car.

"That was Charlie." She ran a hand through her hair, nervously. Heat fizzed in my ears, her grave-eyed look making my heart and my mouth water at the same time.

The thought of the fishing trip flickered through my mind. And suddenly I knew, though he was too far away for me to read him, though the words were yet to pass her lips. It was as though I had a letter from him in front of me, as though I were reading the words off the page.

Charlie's trip was extended.

And suddenly I knew what I was going to do.

_Don't. Let. Her. Go._

I watched her beautiful mouth form the words I already knew, then pause, as though something in my eyes had scared her.

I wasn't surprised, was too far beyond the point where her reactions registered, where I might feel shame at causing her fear. The wrecking ball inside me had done its work, destroyed what it didn't want, smashed through my civility, my selflessness, my logic, my calm - anything that didn't suit its purpose - leaving only the shards of me to rise from the rubble.

_Don't. Let. Her. Go!_

Maybe I wouldn't have done it, maybe I would have come to my senses if he hadn't called, if I hadn't lost myself, if I had walked away – even for a minute – to calm myself down.

If she hadn't been so beautiful, so fragile, so… _mine_.

I stopped thinking, had no need to. Unlike before there was no struggle between my morals – my desire to put her needs first – and my longing, my _craving_ to be with her. The opposition was gone, removed from me – perhaps as dead as her feelings. And unlike before when my love had sought to shield her, to protect her, to sacrifice _anything_ for her, in that moment it was made up of nothing but its own need.

_I won't let you go._

I moved so fast she never saw me coming; one minute sitting uncertainly at the table, the next in my arms as I propelled us out the door and back, into the night…


	5. Chapter 5

**Bella's POV**

_He's losing light…_

The thought struck me the minute the words were out of my mouth.

I watched through my film of nothing, my certainty intact despite the draining that began in his eyes and drew steadily down through his face.

It was like watching a hotplate slowly fade from scarlet-red to black: the fleeing of heat, of power, strangely beautiful.

And strangely sad.

"Edward…?" He didn't respond, just stared at me, his beautiful mouth slumped as though too exhausted to form words.

"Are you ok?" But even as I asked I knew he wasn't; knew that for what I had done there would be no ok.

And yet I was so terribly certain; all the angst and pain was still folded neatly inside me, no rough edges, no difficult lengths, nothing for me to shove away and deal with later. I felt curiously _fixed._

Like there had never been anything _to_ fix.

"Oh!"

The ringing phone caught me off guard but then I was out of my chair, conscious that my movements were slurred, that the air felt heavier, denser.

"Hello?"

"That you Bells?" A familiar voice crackled across a bad line.

Charlie.

I pulled myself up straight, as if the movement would jostle some of the fog from my mind, sober me up.

"Of course it's me! Hi Char-_dad_, how's the trip?" I cringed at my chirpiness, knew I had tried too hard, had over-shot. .

The crackling increased in volume then dropped to a low mutter.

"Great – real great Bells…" He paused. "How's it going with you?"

I closed my eyes. His worry was thick, like smog, polluting every word.

"I'm _fine_, dad, honestly. Stop worrying, you'll fish more." I forced a smile, as though he would see it and relax.

He laughed, quickly, thinly.

"You sure, yeah? I dunno, you sound…funny."

_You need to get through this Bella. He doesn't need to know._

I closed my eyes, trying to remember the way he had left me – or rather the _me_ he had left behind.

"Totally sure – just watching some TV, you know how it is…"

The line crackled again and I could imagine his face creasing into new folds over my words.

I hadn't watched much TV lately.

And yet he seemed to make up his mind to let it go, his voice going slightly gruff, business-like.

"Yeah well, holidays or not, you've still got homework."

_Easy does it Bella._

"What, you can abandon the streets to criminals to go fishing but I can't watch the box?"

"Ha ha, Bells." His voice changed, becoming less gruff, more hopeful. "Jake there?"

_Jake._

The thought should have made me uncomfortable. I explored the shape of it in my mind, traced the picture that swelled up with the name.

_Nothing._

"No, dad, not tonight. Why, you miss him more than me?"

"No, I – look, Bells…" he cleared his throat, "you mind awfully if I stay here a bit longer?"

I paused for a microsecond. Did I?

But the nothingness was vast and opaque.

I forced myself to sound casual, happy for him.

"No way dad – you stay! When's the last time you took a break, huh?"

Charlie laughed, this time it lasted longer and I could feel him relax.

"Just what Billy said – reckons he planned it all long – get me here then tell me we're in for the long haul! Anyway, be back in a week – or ten days if you count the couple I've already been gone. But listen…" I heard a rustling sound, as though he were adjusting his cap, running his hand through his hair.

"I'll come back – if you need me – if you want, I mean…" He trailed off.

_What would he do if he knew?_

But it was a wasted thought. Charlie would have left without so much as a 'goodbye Billy'.

"Don't worry about me, dad. I've got heaps to do before school, TV to watch – you know."

He sighed. "Ok, if you're sure…"

"I am – catch big fish, ok?"

Charlie made a whooping noise and I could literally see the grin on his face, the way his cheeks creased when something got him real good.

"You should see 'em Bells! Big as surfboards – never seen nothing like it! Will bring some home, you'll see."

"Cool dad, don't fall in, ok?"

"Sure, sure. Take care Bells – you need, you call, ok?"

"'K dad."

"Love you kid."

"You too dad – bye."

I hung up the phone and walked back to the table, feeling every step back to that strange place where I could look at him and feel nothing.

He was exactly as I had left him, gold eyes huge like his grief had smeared them across his face. I sat down.

"That was Charlie…" I trailed off.

He was so beautiful, so unearthly fair I thought to myself, quoting a book I no longer remembered. The sleek masculine planes of his face, the full lips, his hair like dark, sweet caramel. Nothing had changed and yet my heart continued its steady, slow beat in my chest.

He continued to stare at me, his gaze seeking something I couldn't even name. I looked away.

"He's on a fishing trip – supposed to be back tomorrow night but…" I took a breath, wondering if I was talking too slow or too fast.

"Anyway, you know Charlie – loves fishing – he's going to hang in there for another we…" I peeked up at him and the words shrivelled on my tongue.

_His eyes._

It was like the switch had flicked back on, the light that had faded now returning but somehow different from before; a creeping, alien glow that made his eyes glitter, his shoulders widen infinitesimally and his fingers twitch claw-like from his palms.

Not once since I had met him had I been afraid of him – not even in those times when a rational person would have been utterly terrified. I'd never come close. Without knowing why, even before I'd known how he felt about me, I'd _trusted_ him. His concern for me had always coloured him - so evident in everything he did - and yet now, through my haze, I understood what it was about the light that disturbed me.

It was colourless; not a glimpse of me in it.

The change in him should have scared the wits from me. In fact I could feel my body tense, my face arch like a spine, going through the motions of a fear I should have felt.

But didn't.

I looked away, already trying to think of something to say. I looked at my fingers in my lap, the tiles beneath my feet. My lips were already poised, just waiting for the words.

And then just as I was about to draw air – despite yet having nothing to say – it was suddenly gone, thrown from my lungs with an impact that seized my careful vision and sent it spinning.

I couldn't cry out, couldn't move, my entire body was closed in a strange new shape.

A rush of air scrawled its cold hand across my face, and I squinted against it still struggling to comprehend what had happened – what was _happening_.

I tried to move but couldn't, the resistance so cold and yet so familiar. And the motion, barely perceptible beneath me; the jumble of colours, muted by darkness flashing past my eyes.

_He's running_

But the knowledge came much as anything else: it appeared and then lay down deep inside me.

I lifted my head. His profile above me was immobile; his jaw clenched so tight that any tighter and his face would surely crumble to dust, his eyes fixed on the night ahead. I took a deep breath, the scent of his thick jacket, his bared throat as sweet as they'd ever been.

_He's running._

I stirred the knowledge with my toe, prodding it, asking for one more thing before it rolled over and slept.

It was so unlike him, I thought, like he'd lost his mind, like a part of him had just dropped away…

_Like me._

Abruptly he looked down at me, his stride not missing a single pace. His face was alive with that awful light, locked in a strange mix of fury and grief. I met his eyes and the determination, the _possession_ in them – despite the haze - shocked me.

"I. Won't. Let. You. Go." The words came out in tight little bites, his velvet voice tattered and bare.

I couldn't respond. There was madness in him, a madness that made the bloodlust of James and Laurent and the vengeance of Victoria crumble into insignificance – I didn't know how I knew that, I just did.

And with it I knew exactly what he was doing; why I was in his arms, clutched tighter to him than his own skin.

He was keeping me.

"Edward…" I mumbled his name, hearing the word come out crumpled and dusty like old tissue.

He didn't respond, perhaps hadn't even heard me. Beneath me, the ground rippled by at unbelievable speed.

So strange, I thought to myself. So very strange to be in his arms. On the surface it was so unbelievably the same, and yet I was outside of myself, seeing him, smelling him, touching him through a screen. I understood – or at least I thought I understood – why he was doing it. But I couldn't make it touch me, could feel no stammer in my chest, no adrenalin surging in my blood.

Only the cool glass against my fingertips.

He's like a phoenix, I thought to myself with that same, strange clarity. So beautiful and then so dead.

_Is that what this is?_

And suddenly I knew: the pack – Jacob and his new brothers. They would find me. It wouldn't matter how fast Edward ran or how far, they would find me.

_He _would find me.

Again I waited for the fear to wash over me, for the panic to turn my skin to ice. I closed my eyes and concentrated, pictured Edward and Jacob, the Cullens and the pack, brought together to some awful confrontation.

Because of Edward.

Because of me.

I leaned right down inside myself, felt the ache in my arms, in my hands as my fingers swept blindly from side to side.

And came up empty.

_Someone could die_. I forced myself to think it, tasted the thought with infinite care.

_Edward_ could die.

I opened my eyes. It was as though he could hear my thoughts. His bones seemed to have tightened, the jaw beneath his flesh blade-sharp.

"Edward." My voice was faint in my ears, surely woefully inadequate for the task at hand. But I had to try – even if it made no difference, even if I was risking further damage – to him, to me – I had to try.

"You need to know something, I - my friend Jacob – Jake – you met him at prom, he –"

His words were like shrapnel, brittle and scattered cutting through mine

"I know."

I waited for his words to seep in, to pass through the glass.

He _knew_.

But the shock was as absent as the fear.

_How long?_ I mused to myself. Was it from the beginning? Since he'd come back? How long had he _been_ back? Had he watched me? Watched him? Watched _us_? Did he know that he'd saved me – that Jacob had saved me?

_Does he know that without him I might have…_

A flutter – so slight, so swift it was gone before I could touch it. Gone before I could even believe it.

I turned my mind back to Edward – to Jacob.

_Does it even matter?_

The thought drifted calmly, softer than a sigh.

_Does it?_

And then my eyes were closing and I was retreating utterly into that strange, soundless place where my face never flushed, my heart never raced and my love for Edward was long-cold in its grave.

I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes again we were inside and he was placing me quickly but carefully onto a sofa that faced a low coffee table.

My first thought was that he had changed his mind, had turned around while I was asleep and taken me home.

But then I saw the way he flashed from the sofa to the window, his white fingers forcing the dark yellow drapes to block out the night.

I sat up on the couch, unsure if he knew I was awake, and looked around me. Everything was dark panelling - the walls, the floors, even the ceiling. The couch I sat on was rose coloured and covered in hundreds of tiny blue and yellow flowers. There was no ceiling light, but the walls had a number of evenly spaced lamps set in old-fashioned looking sconces that coated everything with a treacle-coloured light. A thick rug made of roughly cut wool in a dark shade of gray stretched all the way from the far side of the lounge to the other, where a small door opened onto what looked like a kitchen.

Of its own accord my stomach growled.

Edward whirled around to face me, the soft light dusting rose gold across his pale features.

"Hi…" I managed weakly.

For a moment it looked like he wouldn't respond, his eyes tortured, his shoulders worn tight around his neck as though he balanced a giant python upon them. But then his face softened and I could literally see the snake slithering away.

"Hi." He said.

For a moment we just looked at each other.

"Where are we?" I ventured.

He snapped a quick glance back at the curtains before he replied.

"This is my place."

"_Your_ place?"

For a moment I thought he might smile, but the slight twitch on his lips crumbled like old cake.

"Yes. I bought it a long time ago."

"How long?" The question came out before I even knew why I was asking.

He shrugged, his eyes clamped fiercely on mine as though afraid to stray elsewhere.

"Long time." He said again.

I paused, unsure what to say.

His face twisted suddenly, as thought the ridiculousness of our conversation had only just occurred to him.

"You must be hungry." He said quickly, turning away from me again and back to the window.

As if on cue, my stomach gave another low grumble.

He gestured towards the narrow doorway.

"There's plenty of food, you should eat something."

I stood up, then hesitated.

"You're not going to…? I mean, will you…?" I trailed off.

He looked at me, his face unreadable then looked away. But not before I saw thin lines of agony streak his face.

"I trust you."

I stood silently, unsure what to do. And then Edward was moving from the window to the door, his shoulders again hoisting the phantom python, his profile diamond-hard.

_Someone's here._

My mind tried to race, but the glass was too hard, the fog too thick, causing it to trip and stagger when it wanted to run wildly in circles.

I watched from behind, watched as he placed a single hand on the door knob, his knuckles straining beneath his icing-white flesh.

But before I could think, before I could even begin to wonder if my nightmare was coming to pass, he was opening the door, stepping aside, letting someone in.

She was wet from the storm, her dark hair plastered in skinny, black blades to her forehead.

"Bella…?"

It was Alice.


	6. Chapter 6

So fast the slender lines of her blurred, Alice rushed at me, grabbing me in a fierce and not altogether painless hug.

"Oh Bella! Are you ok?" Her hands slipped down my back, patting my ribs, my waist, my shoulders – as though she were a cop and I a particularly seedy person attempting to sneak past airport security.

"My _god_ you're thin. Have you been eating? Why didn't you eat?" Her words were light and musical, jostling against each other like fighting butterflies. Still gripping my arms she thrust me back, her eyes sweeping me, taking in everything from my still-damp hair to my eyes.

Immediately her eyes narrowed and she turned her head towards Edward so sharply that a human neck would have snapped like old elastic.

"What's wrong with her!?"

Edward had closed the door but other than that he hadn't moved, his face still reflecting that alien glow.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" He sounded tired yet manic at the same time.

Alice looked furious.

"No, it isn't! What's wrong with her?"

"Come on Alice, why else would you _be_ here?"

"Because I saw what you did, idiot!"

Her hands tightened on me and I flinched, not able to help myself.

"But…" He trailed off.

Alice breathed out and her hands loosened slightly.

"Forget it - we'll talk about that later." She turned back to me, her eyes burrowing into mine.

"What's going on Bella, what's happened to you?"

I stared at her wordlessly, then flicked a glance back to Edward. His face was a collage of anguish, anger and that strange glow.

"Bella?" Alice pleaded.

"I just…" My voice was faint. "I don't…"

'Enough!" And then Edward was between us, a tall, beautiful shield between me and Alice's pleas. "Stop it Alice. Just leave her alone."

Alice looked incredulous.

"You're kidding me, right? Leave her alone? Hasn't that done enough damage? And besides – what the hell's she doing here if we should just 'leave her alone'?!"

"Alice…" Edward's face tightened as though gripped by an invisible hand, his voice low, dangerous.

"No, Edward – no! This is madness – sheer madness! I mean, aside from the danger, look at her! Look! Do you really think this is helping?"

His eyes swivelled slowly to mine, the strange light emanating from them raising goose bumps on my skin. And then he whirled away, so fast he was but a smudge from one place to the next.

A beautiful flowered vase exploded from its perch on a side table.

Alice rolled her eyes.

"Men!" she muttered to herself. She turned back to me, but this time she didn't speak, the frustration in her eyes softening.

I looked back at her unable to believe that in the space of just a couple of hours (providing it _had_ only been a couple of hours, I wasn't too sure) I had my two favourite Cullens right there.

She looked exactly the same: tiny, sculpted features, short spiked hair - albeit flattened by the rain - her elfin body fluttering beneath expensive clothes. And yet it was like looking at a beautiful stranger.

Her eyes were wide, full of concern – but there was something else in there too.

_Fear?_

And then suddenly it was gone and she was reaching out, snagging the ends of my hair between skinny fingers.

"My god you need a haircut!"

I blinked, it was the last thing I'd expected.

"I do?"

"You mean you don't _know?_" Come here." She grabbed my hand and dragged me across the grey rug, through the adjoining room that _was_ a kitchen and down a hallway to a bathroom.

"There!" She thrust me in front of the mirror. "See? You're like Rapunzel gone feral!"

"Oh…" It was all I could think of to say. The me in the mirror, or rather the face in the mirror, was just awful. Alice was right: my hair was lank, broken and way too long. Plus my skin was so pale it was as though the thousands of tiny blood vessels beneath had given up and sunk to their deaths. Without thinking I brought my fingers up to the glass, feeling the polished ice of the other girl's fingertips.

"Bella?" Alice sounded worried again. I turned from my reflection and looked at her.

The look was back, the twitchy, scared little spark that glittered in her irises.

"Sorry." I muttered.

"Ok, I've had about enough of this – strip!"

"What?"

"You're having a bath." She said turning her back and yanking the taps open on the bathtub.

"No, Alice I –"

"I said strip, Bella!" She snapped, squeezing liquid soap into the stream of water causing bubbles to churn in the bottom like soda.

I was about to protest again, but she turned her head and shot me a look of such venum, such determination, that I knew without question that if I didn't do as I was told, my clothes would not last for another wearing.

"Ok…" I muttered, unzipping my hoodie and pulling it over my head. "Not too hot though."

Alice didn't answer but I saw her small white hand give a vicious flick of the cold tap before getting to her feet.

"I'm going to leave you to it, get you something to eat."

My stomach gave another huge yowl, like a street cat before a big fight.

"You're going to eat and you're going to lie in this tub for a minimum half hour – you got me?"

I unzipped my jeans, knowing it was pointless to reply, and stumbled trying to get a leg out. Quick as a camera flash she was steadying me, her voice gentler than before.

"Careful Bella." She let go and turned towards the door. "Be back in a sec, ok?"

"Ok." I mumbled. But she was already gone.

By the time I got the rest of my clothes off and sunk down into the bubble-coated water, Alice was back bearing a large plate with an even larger sandwich.

"All of it, you got me?" she threatened handing it to me with a menacing scowl.

I nodded, my mouth filling with water.

And then she was gone again.

I didn't waste any time, my eyes closing at the taste of brown bread, roast beef and mustard. When I was finished, I put the plate on the floor and leaned back with a big sigh, the bubbles in front of my face shifting aside like the parting of the Red Sea.

The not-too-hot water combined with my full stomach felt good and I let my mind drift, my eyes playing along the scalloped edges of the ceiling.

This was Edward's house – he had a house. Despite the Cullen's residence, the idea seemed so strange to me. That he would go off and buy his own house, as if somewhere along the way he pictured living alone.

_Or with someone._

I examined the thought, let the words tickle my mind. What other explanation could there be? The house was way too small for the whole family, but from what I'd seen, perfect for two.

_For a wife…_

I opened my mouth, feeling certain that I needed to inhale, exhale - something. I felt a sudden, fleeting awareness; like I was on the verge of understanding something - something critical. The tiny flutter from before was back, but this time I was certain I felt it.

I half-rose out of the tub, my eyes flying to the door, convinced that I was about to call out. My mind hurtled ahead: he would come, of course, appear in the room faster than the words could fade from my throat.

_And then what?_

I sat there, the warm water trickling down my chest, one hand fastened on the side of the tub intensely aware that something huge was just starting to peek through the mist.

_What?_

But already it was slipping away, too fine for me to grasp. I clung to my compulsion, my compulsion to call out to him, tried to ignore the awful blankness that swarmed back over me.

I whimpered aloud in frustration, but the sound, when it came out, seemed nothing more than a muted sigh.

And then it was gone: the frustration, the confusion, the compulsion.

Gone.

I slid back down into the water, suddenly tired beyond endurance, unable to think of anything other than the warm depths of the bath and the lingering taste of Alice's sandwich.

*****************************************************************************************************************

"This is going to end very badly, Edward."

The night outside the window was silent, still, but I kept watching, waiting for what I knew would come. Behind me I heard Alice sigh and the soft creak of the couch as she sat down.

"I mean, to just take her like that? It's not like you, Edward. This is not the kind of stuff that you do."

"I couldn't…" I gritted my teeth, my jaw. Cringing over the words - about what they meant about me, about her.

"I couldn't leave her."

Alice sighed again.

"But you did before, Edward. 'For her own good' – remember?"

I turned around slowly. "I remember."

"And she was desperate to be with you then, would have gone anywhere with you."

I closed my eyes, the truth of it laying my guts open in thin strips.

"I know."

"So now – and I meant it before, Edward, I have no idea what's wrong with her – but now all I know is that she's here, but she's… Well, you took her when she didn't want to."

She breathed out slowly, loudly, her frustration building momentum.

"Edward, if she doesn't want to be with you - now more than ever you need to let her go."

I felt my face seize up, panic twisting then freezing my mouth, my eyes, my forehead. Unable to help it, I turned towards the hallway, to where Bella had gone, to where I knew she was. The thought of letting her go scalded my insides and brought my basest instincts crashing to the fore again. The urge to go to her, to where she lay in the bath, lay so quiet, so dull, so _gone_. It took everything I had not to make that first step and a low growl trembled from my throat with the effort.

Shock, then fear burned their way across Alice's features.

"Edward, no…" she breathed, up from the couch in a brief shift of time, making her way over to me. "You can't do this. You know…" She paused, unwilling to say the words we both knew were there, lurking in the background like understudies desperate for a lucky break.

She reached my side, her small hands gripping my arms, her face as close to mine as it had ever been, horrified and desperate.

"You know they won't let you do this. Edward, you have to let her go!"

"I can't."

"You have to, Edward. The treaty –"

"I don't care."

Alice looked hysterical. "How can you say that? They'll come for you Edward – there's too many of them now –"

"I know how many there are."

"Then you know what will happen! And if you think we can just sit back –"

"You_ will_ sit back!" Alice shrank from me, my sudden anger scorching her. "I mean it Alice." I could feel the curl at the edge of my words, as though they too were burning. "This has nothing to do with you, with Carlisle. This is _mine_. I did this, I'm _doing_ this." I could hear my voice break, knew I was going places I had never intended to go.

"I made a mistake, Alice. I have to be with her, be _near_ her. I can't walk away again – I know you won't understand, but I can't, not even if she wants me to."

"But Edward -"

"No, Alice! I'm not an idiot, I know what will happen. I know this won't last, but…" I turned away from her, back to the window, to the glossy night that would soon enough break open to reveal my fate.

"You just don't get it. You think you do, because of Jasper - you think you know what I'm feeling, but you don't." I could see my reflection in the glass, a white ghost framed by darkness. Though my lips moved, it was my eyes that told the story.

"My. Whole. Life." I spoke the words slowly, emphasising their sound, their meaning. "My whole life - the whole time - I've been empty. I didn't know it – not really – not until I met her and then… then not until I left her."

I turned from my reflection, from the dead man talking. My words had become hoarse, as though every one cut a bloody trail through my throat.

"She's everything, Alice. There's nothing without her. And if she doesn't want me, I can still be near her. I can still be near her until they drag me away. And if I have two days or two hours or two minutes… If that's all I have with her, if that is the rest of my life – it's enough."

Alice's mouth opened, as if she would say something else – another protest, another plea. Her eyes were blacker than starvation.

"I'm sorry, Alice." I whispered, meaning it with every part of me. "I know this will be hard for you, hard for… for our family. But you have to go. You need to leave me.

"I need you to leave Alice."

*****************************************************************************************************************

_I'm clinging to a rope hanging from a very tall tree. The ground below is so far away I can barely see it and the horror of just how far I could fall causes my legs to clench even tighter on the rope. Above me, the thick green foliage of the tree shifts gently in the breeze. I can smell the clean leafy smell and I know that if I can just make it to the top of the rope, the tree will shelter me and I'll be able to rest without falling. I inch up another couple of feet, my hands sticky with sweat but holding firm to the thick rope. Below me someone calls my name, and though I cannot place the voice, the sound fills me with a terror that sends me scrabbling up the rope, desperate for the sanctuary of the branches. I climb faster and for perhaps the first time in my life I do not falter, my hands and legs working in steady coordination to move me foot by foot. But the top seems to get no closer. Though I can see it clearly, see tiny veins in the deep green leaves, I don't seem to be moving at all. Below me the voice calls to me again and my flesh ripples in response. The breeze that has been blowing gently against my back picks up strength and the rope to which I cling begins to swing slowly from side to side. I panic and start to climb faster, focusing on the rope in front of me. The voice howls louder and I can hear my name broken into two pained halves: "Bell-a!" I climb faster still, but the top - my safe-hold - is still so far away. The wind blows harder and now, for the first time, my hands are slipping and terror fills me: terror of what should happen to me if I slip… If I fall. The wind screams, tearing the rope violently, but still I can hear the voice below, can hear my own voice too as I mutter pleas to myself to hold on, to be strong, to just hang on. But it's no good, my hands are drenched with sweat and too tired to lock and though I fight with everything I know that it is only a matter of time. And though I know that the ground will rush up at me fast, it isn't the ground I'm afraid of, it isn't the earth that makes my heart shudder in my chest and a scream explode from my lips…_

*****************************************************************************************************************

Abruptly Alice turned from me, taking three short steps away.

"How do you know this is the only way?"

Her voice was broken, helpless-sounding, so unlike Alice.

"How do you know she won't snap out of this? How can you decide – decide to just…_die_."

I took a step towards her. "Do _you_ think she can? Alice? Do _you_ think she will?"

Alice turned back to me, defiance and desperation mixing on the bleak palette of her face. "Yes. Yes, I think she will."

"But you don't _know_, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can't see her anymore than I can."

Alice looked dumbstruck and for a moment - just a brief second - I thought maybe I was wrong, that maybe she _could_ see, _had _seen.

_Maybe she will love me again._

But then her face crumpled, and I knew. She wanted to tell me I was wrong; she wanted it so desperately. But it would have been a lie.

"No." She whispered at last.

She sat down again, her head sagging forward on her slender neck.

"I don't understand it…" she said, her voice trembling. "I never told you, but I used to see her all the time. Until you decided to go back, I saw her living every second of her life loving you, _longing_ for you. Then when I knew you were returning, I saw how she would greet you, how she would run from you, fight you, but she would _love_ you."

_She would love you._

Her words brought images to my mind so terrible in their beauty, so deadly in my longing for them, that I could barely stand.

"But then she went dark. I don't know Edward, but something happened, and it's changed everything." She started to look up at me then stopped, as if she couldn't bear to look me in the eye.

"I can't see her anymore, Edward. I swear when I saw what you would do - that you would take her away – it was like - like seeing you trying to hold smoke in your arms…"

She shook her head, unhappy with her explanation.

"I don't know any better way to explain it. I wish I could tell you I see something – and I should, I should be able to see _something_ about what will happen to her. But I don't. It's like she's not even there.

And then she looked at me and for all the devastation I saw there, the naked hopelessness that matched my own, I wished she hadn't.

"Edward, it's like she's dead."

**************************************************************************************************************

And suddenly I wasn't falling, but rather sitting up and screaming into the hollow quiet of an unfamiliar bathroom. I couldn't focus, my body was shuddering from the effects of the dream, unwilling to let go of the terror.

First Edward then Alice came running into the room, fear scratching harsh lines on their perfect faces. I wanted to say something but I was too stuck in the dream, too stuck in the scream that - although it no longer had sound - was still clenched to my face.

Edward lunged towards me, but Alice threw herself in his path, shoving him hard with her tiny hands - so hard that he crashed against the cabinet. Her thin arms were stronger than I could have imagined as she pulled me out of the water, sheltering my naked body with a towel. But then Edward was there again, more determined than Alice could ever hope to be, lifting me out of her arms, cradling me like a half-drowned puppy, pressing my silent screaming face against his cold, hard throat.

"_GO!"_ He yelled, his voice dark and ferocious. "I mean it Alice, you _go_ - you _GO NOW!_"

Alice was frozen, half crouching next to the tub, water from my hasty rescue all over her expensive shoes. Her eyes were huge.

For a moment it looked like she would speak. Her eyes darted from Edward to me and then back again.

In my dream haze I knew I was scaring her – scaring her worse than I already had. But I couldn't help it, had no words to help her when I couldn't even help myself.

And then with one last pleading stare, one that caused Edward's fingers to bite painfully through the towel, she was gone.

Instantly Edward was on the move, carrying me through the bathroom door, down the hall and into a bedroom. So carefully I barely felt it he placed me on the bed, pulling the blanket around me over the towel as he did so and kneeling before me.

"Bella?" My name was a whisper muffled by his fear. I couldn't speak. Though the memory of the dream was draining from my mind, the terror remained and as I looked at his stricken face it seemed to rebound upon me, his terror mingling and feeding my own.

The vagueness of earlier, the sensation of drifting through an emotionless fog was gone. Every atom of my body was consumed by that single explosive emotion. I couldn't verbalise it, couldn't reason it, and as the seconds ticked by I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into it.

"Bella?" He was closer now, his white face so near my own I could see the tiny grooves in his mouth, the individual lashes on his lids.

But I couldn't speak, the terror a thick glue in my throat, my mind a hopeless snarl, unable to reconcile the reality from the dream. Somehow, even there, sitting on the bed, my feet clearly touching the soft carpet, I still felt in mortal danger of plummeting to my death.

And then before I could untangle it, before I could even take another rasping breath, a howl that I recognised all too well echoed through the woods.

Edward stiffened and in his eyes was a finality - a grim acceptance - that even I – in my jumbled state – could not fail to recognise. And then before I could even try to do anything with that knowledge, he was kissing me, cold lips somehow hot against mine. And oh this was so different to what I knew. Before where he had pressed his lips so carefully to mine, now he moaned against my mouth, forcing my lips open so he could kiss me passionately, aggressively, _hungrily. _If his smell had ever seemed hypnotic to me, if his taste had always been a thousand – a million – times more, now I was destroyed by it, shattered into too many pieces to fathom. The first time he had ever kissed me - despite the caution, the restraint, the care for my safety – I could have died for the taste of him.

But now, death was simply not enough.

His hands hooked through my hair, one grasping a large handful the other dragging its way down my body, fingers savouring my skin, as he pressed his body hard into mine so that I fell back onto the bed. And all the while he continued to make that sound, that half groan/half growl that seemed to come from so deep down inside him.

Like he was loving and dying at the same time.

The fear that he would lose control seemed to be beyond him, in fact he seemed to be inviting it as he ground himself against me and grazed his lips, his teeth across my cheek and down my jaw to my neck

But then as suddenly as he had started he stopped, moving off me with his usual grace, his body tauter than wire.

For a moment he stood next to the bed looking down on me, his mouth partially open as if he would say my name.

_Like he's saying goodbye..._

But as a second howl echoed through the night, he turned – his bared teeth a brief white flash in the dim light - and was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

The most confusing, frightful and yet glorious feeling imaginable. The taste of him, the pure energy of his scent that clung to my skin, to every breath I took, inhaled sweet and deep into my lungs. The pure motion of my senses flickering and unfurling within me. My craving for him and my terror _of_ him engulfing me, feeding on me.

With surely only enough _me_ for one to survive…

And then Alice was by my side, strangely back though I'd watched her leave, her cold fingers digging into my arm, shaking me.

I was sprawled where he'd left me, the towel flat on either side where his body had ground it from my flesh. But this time she didn't bother trying to cover me, and in her eyes I could see a sheer terror that, if not a mirror, was at least a decent likeness of my own.

Her words came out in a rush.

"You need to fix this Bella – I'm so sorry he left – I'm sorry we _all_ left – this is my fault as much as his - I _KNEW_ he loved you, knew he couldn't stay away - and I knew how much you'd suffer too and still I let it happen, Bella! – I did, I let it happen because I thought I had to let him figure it out for himself – figure out once he _did_ leave why he would never – _could never_ – leave you again - but I fucked it up, I know I did, I should have told you, should have said something, but I was so scared of changing things – somehow screwing up the way it would work by telling you - but now it's just fucked anyway – and I know you don't deserve this, you really don't Bella, you don't deserve any of this, and I don't know if this is right for you – I wish I could see but I _can't_, I can't see a fucking thing!"

Her voice had risen, hysteria causing bubbles of spit to form on her perfect red lips. Her musical voice ragged, rotting.

And yet I was somehow beyond her, awake but back in my dream, hanging from the rope, once more in danger of slipping to my death. In some part of my mind I knew that Alice's grip on my arm was painful, that her usual care with my oh-so human form had vanished in the face of her fear, but I had no connection to the pain which, just like her words, fell beyond me.

_The voice below is a hollow wail that seems to swell beneath me like a black hole. I struggle to block it out, to hear only the wind that is suddenly no match for that long, haunted echo…_

Above me, Alice continued, oblivious.

"But I have to put him ahead of you one more time – I have to, I'm so sorry but I have to, and I need you to get out there, you have to get out there and stop him, Bella, you've got to convince him that you still love him, that it isn't all over, that he hasn't killed it all – oh god even if you don't – even if you really _don't - _even if it's a lie - because otherwise he is _dead_ - and he's my brother Bella and I can't help him – I can't even _see_ him – and I love him and please… _please!_" She broke off with a sob, her words so splintered, so fragile they passed through her lips like powder.

_But there is no blocking it out and suddenly I know it; its timbre and length lights up a particular colour in my mind that has languished unseen for so long. The colour spills from me, floods my body, and without question I know why I am afraid, why I am so utterly petrified of letting go…_

As though I were emerging out of a long underwater tunnel, a great gasping breath tore through me, so violently that Alice released her grip, the continuation of her pleas a soundless parting of her lips.

In that rush everything came back to me - _everything_ – it was like the worst case of pins and needles imaginable, somehow sped up and intensified – sensation tearing through my mind and my heart with such force I lurched up and forward beneath the pressure.

_And then release. And suddenly I'm going down, falling like water. The tree is rushing past my eyes, as is the rope to which I'd once clung. Below me the ground soars up to embrace me, and I feel my throat close in horror, because I know when it touches me, HE will touch me and then I will be lost._

_Because there is no distance when he is upon me; no way of cleaving that part of me that is his and his alone._

_And as the wind screams in my ears, I try to bring myself to order, because the closer I get the less I can remember how I got to where I was, whether I found the rope, or the rope found me. But already it escapes me, and I can feel heat blooming in my skin, defying the wind that chilled me so high above and tears into me now. And as the wind reaches its highest pitch yet, I hear something else, not his voice but _a_ voice, somehow so small and yet so powerful it feels as though it can destroy me with a single word._

_Edward._

And just like that, the little voice I'd thought I'd lost exploded into my mind – denied a voice for what felt like a lifetime her scream took up every part of me, propelled me to my feet, the pain inside me as intense as though I were hitting the ground time after time.

I staggered forward, lurched towards the door. Alice reached for me but I shrugged her off as easily as though she were a fragile branch that I cut through on my long fall down.

My legs felt disconnected, but I forced them to move, crashing through the hall, back to the bathroom where my clothes lay in a damp puddle. My fingers moved stiffly to dress myself, like clothes pegs left too long on the line, but somehow I managed, the little voice urging me to hurry.

Back down the hallway and through the lounge I staggered, graceless as I had ever been, the little voice now screeching like a demented cheerleader. The front door was closed and if my hand hadn't found the door knob on the first try, I felt sure I would have smashed through it – torn that wood to shreds as though it were paper.

But the door swung inward at my touch and I was through; into the dark envelope of night where Edward stood, his back to me, facing the woods.

He turned to me immediately and at that moment when our eyes locked I felt the ground rushing up to meet me one more time; knew that this time it really was now or never. That perversely, if I didn't collide, didn't hit the ground, I might as well be dead.

The little voice had reached a crescendo in my head, and as the hard earth grew massive in my mind, I let my heart swell and open, and rather than cringe from the collision I embraced it, clawed towards it, suddenly accepting, once and for all, that if it hurt, it was ok – even if it killed me, it was ok.

And as I hit, my voice soared, finally in unison with the one inside me:

"Edward!"

"Bella?" My name was a ragged strip of sound torn from his throat, his features stretched taut into a ferocious, yet hopeless, mask. I could see from his eyes just how far gone he was; they were the black of newly mined coal, simultaneously opaque and diamond-bright.

He shifted and the idea that he would move even an inch away from me brought me lurching towards him, surging forward to fling myself against him, my fingers seeking his flesh, clawing through his hair. His body was motionless and icy beneath mine, but it was solid and it was there and my limbs twitching convulsively against him.

But then just as it seemed as though he might loosen, might twine his arms around me, he was torn from me, the cause of our sudden separation a massive, shaggy shape.

Together they tumbled, end over end, a vicious tangle of russet fur and marble-white skin. The impact had knocked me from my feet and I screamed where I lay, knowing even as I did that nothing could penetrate the sound that already echoed around the clearing – so feral in its wildness, so imbued with pain and rage.

And then Alice was flying from the cottage and into the fray. My heart flung itself repeatedly against my ribcage as I watched her tiny frame seem to dissolve into the sprawl, as though consumed by a fight for which there could be only two. But then somehow – and though my eyes never left the scene, I was blind to how – she emerged, the wolf that was Jacob shoved before her, Edward sprawled on the earth.

I screamed again, and this time the sound swelled loud and uncontested on a scene that was suddenly and awfully quiet.

But then he was rising, slowly, to his feet.

"Alice, don't."

I felt her hiss before I heard it, but she remained where she was.

Jacob turned and made a move as though to come to my side, but before I could even breathe, Edward was in front of me, his body locked in defensive rage.

"Don't come near her."

With a snarl that was somehow high-pitched, Jacob stayed put. Behind him Alice stook a step forward so that the three of them formed a strange, awkward triangle.

Jacob continued to growl, now low and deep in his throat, a continuous, coiling sound that reverberated in the still night air.

Edward hadn't taken his eyes from Jacob. "You..." he paused as though seeking a better way to say what needed to be said, "You. Will. Not. Take. Her." His lips twitched as though to skin back from his teeth.

Jacob's glare said everything his wolf lips could not.

I met Alice's eyes, reaching for Edward at the same time.

"Edward –"

"Alice, take Bella into the house."

Before I could even look to see what Alice's reaction would be, shock and fury engulfed me – come from a part of me that could still think clearly, still form words.

"Take me – what?! No you won't – Edward I _won't_. You won't do this, this is stupid – unnecessary – I –"

"_Alice!"_ His voice was so sharp it rent my words down the middle.

To my left, Jacob had lowered into a blunt crouch.

"Listen to her Edward – please, she –"

"No!" The word was sharper still and so loud it flattened any hint of sound from the surrounding woods.

"Take her Alice! Take her or –"

"Or what?!" And her scream was every bit the match for him. "What, Edward? What?"

For a moment, Alice looked like she might attack him herself. Her anger was so intense I found mine falter in its stead. I cast a glance at Jacob – his wolf-face looked angry but confused, his head shifting from Edward to the woods, his great, bronze-coloured tail held in a stiff line from his tailbone.

"Edward…" The stress had left me hoarse, but I was sure the sound had carried, saw the way he flinched, the tremor running from his mouth to his fingers, which clenched as though around rare coins.

I wanted to stand, to go over to him, to tell him this didn't have to happen, tell Jacob in the same breath that there was no wrong here for him to right – that I was safe in the only way I would ever be safe: with Edward by my side.

But at that moment, four wolves burst from the trees, fur spiked in angry Mohawks on their backs.

Alice hissed viciously, her tiny body tensing into a series of sharp points, but

Edward remained motionless. I took a step towards him and Jacob growled. Immediately the wolf nearest to him sprang forward to stand by his side. I froze in my stride, terrified of doing the wrong thing.

"Alice." Edward said again, this time quietly, calmly. "Please take Bella into the house."

I saw Alice turn from the wolves to Edward and back again, her eyes a fix of helplessness, rage and defiance.

She won't do it, I thought to myself - even while I wondered why I couldn't just speak up and solve this whole awful mess.

But I was still jarred by my fall to the ground, and my lips that would say the words could only curve into the shape of his name, as though that action alone could convey everything I needed to. And a new terror raged within me, made stronger because of the obvious fragility of the situation – the feeling that everything could go oh so badly with just the flick of the wrong finger. I screwed up my face, tried for the life of me to focus, to say the words that would stop the awful from happening.

"Don't leave me."

Immediately I wanted to recall them. Indeed I could barely recognise them, saw no relation in them to what I had wanted to say. Edward's face ripped around to look into mine, and the pain I saw there tore through my guts like shrapnel.

The little voice wailed inside me._ He doesn't know what you meant! He'll think you're reliving the woods - hating him, dead to him, even now! Speak! SPEAK! _

But my voice seemed to have its own mind, settled on its own course. And perhaps in some way I _was_ reliving that awful day. That being forced now into this moment where he was setting himself in place for a battle he could not win – where losing meant death – I had only one plea left inside me. It didn't make sense, held no strategy to it, no guidance on how to avoid such an outcome – but it was all I could feel. All I could express.

"Don't… Don't leave me."

"Alice…" This time his calm was gone, and the quiet voice that spoke her name was haunted, ravaged.

Alice moved. Faster than the wolves could react she was by my side, her tiny hands pressing into the small of my back, to guide me away.

"No!" I screamed and that was enough for Jacob. He let out a snarl so sharp it could have cleaved phone books and tore across the clearing, the other wolves close behind.

Alice let me go, whirling to face them. I seized my chance and threw myself at Edward. I hit his chest so hard I winded myself, but still my fingers twisted into his hair, my legs wrapped around his waist.

Jacob hit us full-charge, and together, the three of us tumbled down. I vowed I would not let go, clung to his icy frame, forcing my fingers to mirror his strength, to lock into him to a point where nothing could force us apart.

But it wasn't enough. With frightening ease Edward tore me away from him, his black eyes glittering with tiny red lights.

Jacob rushed him again, this time with no me between them they went down.

I didn't think, just threw myself after them, landing hard on Jacob's side which had twisted with the impact.

"Stop – stop!" I screamed desperately. "Jacob, _stop!"_

Immediately he rolled away, His muzzle curled back from sharp teeth.

Beneath me Edward jerked to his feet his flint-hard fingers already seeking to remove me from him, but this time I knew I couldn't let him go – that to do so would mean my final chance had come and gone; that to be separated from him but once more, would mean the end of it all. So I shoved my arm beneath his shirt, my hand clasping his neck, his hair, and all the while my lips pressed against his ear, begging him to stop, crying 'no no no no no' over and over, my eyes locked on Jacob, beseeching him to listen - even if Edward wouldn't – and to stop playing into Edward's hands.

Behind Jacob Alice was a blur of colour flitting between the other wolves, distracting them, infuriating them, doing – I suddenly realised – everything she could to keep them from Edward, keep them from over-running us and bringing this whole awful night to a bloody end.

Edward was still, but his body hummed with tension, with fury, his eyes never leaving those of the wolf. When he spoke his voice was low, seductive.

"You're absolutely right, Jacob. You were right to come here. If you hadn't I would have kept her here forever – whether she wants it or not, whether she loves me or not. You've got me pinned, Jacob, I _am_ a monster and I deserve to die. But Bella does not need to see this. Just let my sister take her away, Jacob. This is between you and me – your pack and me – not my family, not Bella. I don't want her to see this Jacob. _Don't make her see this_."

Jacob let out an eerie keening sound and suddenly the wolves surrounding Alice became still.

"Alice" Edward said again, still in that low, dangerous voice, "please take Bella into the house."

And suddenly it was all too much for me; the notion that Alice would walk me quietly into the house, would keep me there while her brother was butchered outside. Butchered because he loved me and thought I couldn't love him in return.

I let go and lurched away from him, his image and all that he represented suddenly too terrifying to touch. He seemed to expect it, his eyes flicking briefly to mine and then away. That he would do this, that he would throw everything away, waste everything we were, infuriated me beyond all possible recall. I took a deep breath, knowing even as I did that it was just fuel to the rage swelling beneath my skin.

And then I exploded.

"You promised me – you _promised_ me! You said you would never, _ever_ leave me again – well what the hell do you call this? _What do you call this_? You're going to kill yourself – make Jacob kill you – so not only will you leave me again – forever this time – you'll make me hate my best friend!" I whipped my head around to Jacob, to the wolves who stood silently behind him.

"And you know I will Jake – I don't care what you think you're doing, I don't give a f*ck what you think is the right thing or the wrong thing or _your_ thing – I will hate you so bad I'll wish you dead every day for the rest of my life."

But I wasn't finished there.

"And you –" I turned on Alice. "You knew, but you left me to it. And then you had the nerve - the _nerve_ - to beg me to make things right. Well f*ck you Alice, f*ck you for wanting to wait for Edward to realise his mistake, f*ck you for making me think you had _all_ left me – all given up on me - not just him. And f*ck you now for even _thinking_ of doing what he wants."

I turned back to Edward.

"So if you think, even for a second, that I'm going to walk, or be carried or get dragged into that house and listen to you throw yourself on your own sword because you're too much of an idiot to stop for one second and consider – just consider…" My voice hit a crack and stuttered. "That I _can't_ stop loving you – that I_ can't - _even if I wanted to, which I d-don't."

I choked and suddenly I was crying hot, horrible tears. "I can't, don't you see? Not _ever_! And if I can't, then _you_ can't – I mean it Edward, you _can't_. You can't give up on me. You owe me – _you owe me more! _So don't you do it, Edward." I flung my head around, to Jacob, to Alice, to the other wolves, speaking to them all.

"Don't you do it!"

A flicker of something touched his face, a tiny breeze that seemed to ruffle the agony that gored his skin. In my periphery, Alice, Jacob and the other wolves were as motionless as though they were but figures on a stage backdrop.

I didn't know I was on the ground, didn't know until his knees buckled and he dropped down before me. This close I could see the hope, so fragile against his pain it seemed too insubstantial to live. Desperately I wanted to nurture it, to cradle it in my palms and blow more life into it.

"Don't…" But my voice was gone, and all I could do was stare into his face, let my eyes speak for every part of me.

He grasped me to him, suddenly, almost violently. To my left I heard Jacob shift, the sharp rasp of his breath. But whether he stayed his ground or was stopped by Alice I was not to know, for suddenly I was clinging to him, entwined in his icy grip, my face crushed to his neck and then his face, where I could not stop myself from parting my lips, the shudder that ran through me at his taste so extreme I felt sure I would dissolve.

"Bella." I heard my name through my own skin, felt the reverberation penetrate me, just as his fingers penetrated my hair. And then suddenly I was speaking, could not stop speaking. The words that came out were not angry now, they were garbled and urgent and shamefully raw, but I could feel from his arms, his fingers, his very skin, how they affected him – how they fed him. How they took that tiny spark and simply yanked it into life.

He gave a guttural moan and I felt his arms tense around me then grow strangely fluid, as thought they could mould to every curve of my body, enclose me like a second skin. His fingers still twined deep within my hair, but his mouth was open, pressed against my forehead, the breath that he didn't need to take inhaling savagely. I reached my own hands up, within the circle of his arms, trying to tilt his face down, wanting to see him, wanting to be only centimetres – millimetres even – from his lips – from a kiss I'd thought to never know again. But still he wouldn't move, wouldn't stop breathing me, gasping for my scent as though I were his very last breath.

Everything else vanished: Alice, the wolves, the house, the clearing – everything other than the sensation of being held by him. I felt boneless, weightless, and slowly, slowly, as he held me in his arms - held me as though he would hold me forever – the awful terror – both his and mine – faded away.

* * *

A thousand, perhaps even a million years later, I realised we were sprawled on the grass, twined together like vines. I raised my head slightly, towards the woods.

Alice, Jacob and the wolves were gone.

I looked back down at Edward. His eyes burned into mine, as though unwilling to break even the slightest contact. For the first time in months, I felt a dark blush spread rampant across my cheeks.

"Oh…" My voice cracked on the sound and a hint of a smile curved his lips.

"Oh?" he questioned, his eyes brightening, as though under some inner sliver of dawn.

Now it was my turn to smile, my lips hesitant and shaky as though rising from a Rip Van Winkle-style sleep.

"Oh." I said again, foolishly, happily.

His face, which seemed as though on the verge of breaking into his familiar crooked smile, became suddenly serious.

"Bella, I –" But my hand against his mouth silenced the words, told him that there was no more forgiving to be done, that he need not promise to never do it again – that I knew he _could_ never do it again. That even though he feared his love for me might kill me - he had no way of living without me.

And in accepting that, it was unbreakable – _we_ were unbreakable.

And then his smile truly did break and I traced it with my fingers, part of me certain this was all just a dream, the other convinced that nothing my mind could put together in sleep could possibly match this moment.

It was then that I realised the dawn was not just inside him, but all around us, lighting the clearing with a pale violet glow.

"We should go inside." He murmured, his fingers tracing gentle circles on my shoulder and up to the side of my neck.

"Yes." I breathed. "We really should." But neither of us moved, and when Alice emerged from the tree line, her hands filled with tiny blue and white flowers, the sun was tipping the horizon, staining the tree-tops pinkish-gold.

"Still here?" she twinkled, her skin luminous against her dark cloud of hair. Suddenly the words I'd said to her came back to me and I cringed, another dark blush creeping to the fore.

"Alice, I –"

But she cut me off thrusting both hands of flowers down in front of my face.

"Left or right, Bella? White or blue?"

"Uh –"

But she had no patience with my hesitation, brandishing the tiny bouquets under my nose and letting loose a cloud of pollen to coat my dawn-damp shirt.

"Well – which is it?"

"I – well, blue, I guess." I muttered.

"I _knew_ it!" She pulled the flowers back and twirled in perfect circles, her arms high above her head. "Blue is just perfect!"

"What is she talking about?" I whispered to Edward, my cheeks still flaming crimson.

"I have no idea." But when I looked at him there was a strange depth to his eyes, and the slightest hint of a smile hidden in the deep corners of his mouth.

Alice stopped twirling at his words, mischievous annoyance on her face.

"What was it you said to me before, Bella?"

I cringed again. Here it was: it had of course been too much to hope that I could just offload all that stuff without _some_ sort of retribution.

"Alice, I'm so sorry –"

"Oh no, don't be sorry Bella." She did another quick twirl, the annoyance on her face vanishing as thought it had never been. "You were absolutely right. I _did_ know and I _did_ leave you to it." She shrugged, grimaced and then grinned.

"But I certainly won't be making that mistake again."

"Meaning…?" I couldn't help but ask, even though a little trickle of fear was pooling in my stomach.

"Your wedding of course – yours and my stupid brother's."

I felt my mouth fall open, my face surely a mask of shock and not a little horror. Beside me I felt Edward tense.

"My _what?!"_

"Wedd-_ing. _Wedding. You know, bride, groom, gorgeous dress." Alice did another big twirl, the little bouquets blurring in bright spots of colour.

"I know what a wedding is, Alice." I turned my head to look at Edward, shocked to find he wasn't looking at Alice in annoyance but was rather looking quite seriously at me.

"No." I said shaking my head, one foot kicking into the ground with emphasis. "Oh no – you can forget that."

But Alice was already speaking again.

"Actually, Bella, it's you who can forget it – or maybe get used to it is the better term" she mused.

"Get used to it? Get used to what? Edward!" I shoved at him with all my strength. "Tell her – tell her I don't do weddings." I could hear the desperation saturating every word.

But Edward just looked at me, his seriousness taking on a certain intense edge, a _determined_ edge, I thought.

_Oh no…_

I turned back to Alice.

"If you think I'm just going to sit back and let you bully me into – into – _marriage_."

"Actually, Bella, I'm not going to have to bully you at all."

"Well then that settles it." I forced myself to smile smugly at her. "No bullying, no..." I couldn't bring myself to say it. "No nothing!"

Alice didn't reply, just twirled around and around, her teeth flashing white on every rotation.

_Oh no…_

And then she stopped twirling, instead taking a couple of steps towards the cottage before pausing once more.

"Whatever you say Bella, but there's something you should know."

"What, that you've lost your mind?" I flung at, my sarcasm hanging heavy and somehow cheap in my mouth.

Alice tilted her head to one side. "Oh no, nothing like that."

Beside me I could feel Edward shaking with laughter.

"Well what then?"

She paused, a witchy little smile creasing her mouth. "I can see again."

I gaped, unable to speak, the gravity of what she was telling me routing my tongue to the ground.

"But don't worry." She continued. "Like I said, this time I'm not just going to leave you to it. I mean after all – can you imagine what sort of mess you'd make of it without me?"

And then, before I could reply, before I could threaten to blind her for life or choke her on a blue dress, or any of the other things that suddenly raged through my head, she ducked a neat little courtesy, turned to the door and vanished inside the cottage.

Edward had stopped laughing, but when I turned to look at him, my face etched with indignation, his smile seemed still to teeter on the edge.

"Don't worry," he murmured, his face tilting close to my own. "I'm not going to ask you to marry me."

"Good!" I snapped, harsher than I felt, my anger suddenly so fragile against the drug of his scent.

He leaned in closer, his cool lips brushing mine and then parting, so he could graze his tongue across my cheek to the lobe of my ear.

"Don't worry." He said again, this time in a whisper that barely carried sound, but filled me with heat.

"It's you who's going to ask me."

_The end._


End file.
